1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the housing of multiple rolls of thin webs of paper, plastic, foils, and the like, and to the dispension of random lengths by pulling and tearing, and more specifically to an enclosure adapted to be attached to an existing cabinet or structure.
2. Description of Prior Art
Devices, containers, and adapters for holding and dispensing small portions of sheet materials have a long history of development. They generally follow the development and introduction of new sheet materials, particularly wax paper, foil, plastic wrap, paper towels, sandwich bags, and trash bags.
Today, the consumer is now confronted with all of these sheet goods which are usually stored and dispensed individually from inexpensive cardboard cartons which allows for dispensing by a pulling and tearing action accomplished by pulling the shee material against a serrated edge located along one side of the container. Because of the dissimilar properties of the sheet materials, this type of container requires a bewildering multitude of manipulative tasks which must be mastered to beneficially use the dispensed sheet goods. These inherent problems have created a need for improved dispensers. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,542 to Ruff(1986),and U.S. Pat. No. 4,779,780 to Scharf(1986),and U.S. Pat. No. 4,840,299 to Burns(1989), all address problems related to pulling and paying out of the web, anti-recoiling, and clinging of the plastic wrap.
The problems of storage and inconvenience caused by the multitude of roll products has been addressed by the prior art by combining the dispensing and housing of multiple rolls into a singular dispenser. The early inventions, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,722,387 to Tuttle(1955), and U.S. Pat. No. 2,726,825 to Ziskin et al, (1955), are two roll dispensers, one for wax papers, the other for perforated paper towels. Neither of these styles are suitable for adding storaqe spaoe for more roll produots suoh as plastio wrap and foil.
A three roll dispenser is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,156,392 to Johannes(1964), but it is suitable only for roll products of approximately the same diameters. Thus it could not dispense the present day paper towel roll with plastic wrap and foil because it is considerably larger in diameter than the other two. It also relies on a pair of nip rollers to feed out the material and adds to the manufacturing costs.
A much simpler three roll dispenser is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,603,519 to Brown(1969), which features a pair of spaced vertically trays which are swingably connected to the sides to make refilling easy. It is designed to handle one large diameter roll of paper towels but only two of the smaller rolled goods. It also lacks a means for allowing the film end or tab to be grasped and pulled for the next dispensing.
Another three roll dispenser is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,762,042 to Denter et al(1988), but it features a slidable cutter to remove the dispensed film. Like the prior art, it can only dispense two of the small diameter rolls and one large paper towel roll.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,645,107 to Norris(1987), a sheet material dispenser that can dispense paper towels and three rolls of food wrap materials, plus dispense food bags is disclosed. It discloses a slidable housing which permits refilling of the products. It also arranges the rolls vertically and horizontally so as to make it compact. This arrangement makes replacement of the spent rolls to be cumbersome, especially if the spent roll is a bottom roll. It is also troublesome to have to frequently remove the entire dispensing box which should prove to be large and heavy when fully loaded. The dispenser also requires the use of eight spindles which must be inserted into the cores of the roll goods and adds to the manufacturing costs. They could easily be misplaced or lost and impair the use of the dispenser.
Another disadvantage of this device is the long leads or tabs that must be threaded into the proper channels for each web path. If the proper dispensing forces which control drag, recoiling, pulling and tearing, are not utilized, then the user will have to remove the rolls and rethread the tabs frequently. In view of the previous discussion on refilling, the invention could present more inconveniences than those it tried to solve.